Interesting Reading #337

Apple pushed Intel to develop Light Peak cabling - "it reviewed evidence that Apple began talks with Intel in 2007 to develop a new cabling standard with the capacity to handle “massive amounts of data” and replace a variety of existing ports, including USB, FireWire, and DisplayPort..."

The Secrets Inside Your Dog's Mind - "Henry the schnoodle just did a remarkable thing. Understanding a pointed finger may seem easy, but consider this: while humans and canines can do it naturally, no other known species in the animal kingdom can..."

A History of Storage Cost - "When I got my first computer in the early nineties, I remember wondering how I could possibly fill all 30 megabytes of hard drive space, even if I had a thousand years. A decada and a half later, on a sunny August afternoon, I decided that it was time to invest in a terabyte drive. A terabyte. Seriously? How did this 100,000x increase in needed space happen without me really noticing?"

Contraception fights global warming - "Each $7.00 spent on basic family planning over the next four decades will reduce CO2 emissions by more than a ton. To achieve the same results with low carbon technologies would cost a minimum of $32.00. If we just meet that need that women have already expressed for fewer children and access to contraception, we will save 34 gigatons between now and 2050, equivalent to nearly six times the annual emissions of the US."

Ignoring RIAA lawsuits cheaper than going to trial - "The same federal judge who oversaw the Joel Tenenbaum file-sharing trial earlier this year passed out default judgments this week against other file-swappers who never bothered to show up—and they now owe far less than Tenenbaum..."

Lattice Effect - "When I initially viewed the 256-byte intro Puls by Řrřola that took first place at Riverwash 2009, I think I shared a common sentiment with many other developers out there: That's impossible! Řrřola was kind enough to release his x86 assembly language source code, revealing that the effect is computed without the aid of 3D libraries or hardware acceleration. It's mind-blowing..."

Afghanistan, September, 2009 - "Violence in Afghanistan has reached its most intense of the eight-year-old war despite record levels of U.S. and NATO troops being sent to fight the Taliban. July and August were the two deadliest months to date for coalition forces, and September is already the 3rd-deadliest, with 38 U.S. deaths - 68 total including all coalition members. With an apparently resurgent Taliban and over 120,000 foreign troops on the ground, and a recent push for the U.S. to consider sending 40,000 more (beyond the additional 21,000 troops still committed but yet undeployed), the situation in Afghanistan could possibly become even more intense in the near future..."

Some artists use paint, others bronze... - "Some artists use paint, others bronze – But for Nathan Sawaya he chooses to build his awe-inspiring art out of toy building blocks. LEGO bricks to be exact..."

A brief guide to DNA sequencing - "Understanding technology shouldn't be limited to processors and memory. Developments in DNA sequencing are already changing the face of medicine, and the pace of technology development in the field is staggering. Read on to understand the basics of DNA sequencing..."

How to open a combination lock - "There are 64,000 perceived combinations to open a pad lock... There exists, though, a simple mechanical weakness that reduces this number of possible combinations to 100..."

Erasing Dark Energy - "Why do we need dark energy to explain the observable universe? Two mathematicians propose an alternate solution that, while beautiful, may raise even more questions than it answers..."

Did Cooking Give Humans An Evolutionary Edge? - "In Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, primatologist Richard Wrangham argues that cooking gave early humans an advantage over other primates, leading to larger brains and more free time. Wrangham discusses his theory, and why Homo sapiens can't live on raw food alone..."

Melting memory chips in mass production - "South Korean manufacturer Samsung Electronics announced this week that it has begun mass production of a new kind of memory chip that stores information by melting and freezing tiny crystals. Known as phase-change memory (PCM), the idea was first proposed by physicists in the 1960s. Here, Nature explains how PCM works, why it has taken so long to develop and how it could change your mobile phone forever..."